The present invention relates to a method of on-line treating and/or processing containers.
The present invention may be used to advantage for producing and filling bottles for liquid food products, to which the following description refers purely by way of example.
In the manufacture of glass or plastic bottles for food products, the bottles are treated and/or processed in various ways before being fed to a filling station. Since each process takes a certain length of time, the bottles are step-fed along a given processing path and arrested between steps at successive processing stations. Such a method obviously results in relatively slow throughput of the bottles, and in relatively low output of the production line as a whole.
Alternatively, the bottles are fed, on a continuous production line, along a given path extending through one or more processing stations, are unloaded off the production line at each processing station, and are loaded back on to the production line after processing.
This method also involves drawbacks by requiring the use of bottle loading and unloading devices which are invariably expensive, bulky, and unreliable.
EP-0596487-A1 discloses a machine for selectively crystallizes molecularly oriented thermoplastic bottles, each of which is composed of portions thereof with different degrees of orientation. Portions of each bottle are heat treated at temperatures suitable to crystallize said portions according to the degrees of orientation thereof wherein the heat treatment takes place in a heating environment on an unconfined container. The selectively crystallized container is then sized in a finishing means, each of which consists of two halves movable into closed and open positions by means of hinge; the two halves form, when closed, a space corresponding to the desired final shape of those regions of the container which were heat-treated, and which will have shrunk and deformed due to that treatment. The freshly treated bottles are quickly encased within that space while still at a deformation temperature and pressurized to conform them to the sizing fixture, which is cooled by conventional means; they are kept there until cold enough to maintain the dimensions determined by the fixture, at which time the specified contained volume of the bottle is fixed. The bottles emerging from a heat tunnel are transferred by means of conventional grippers into the sizing fixtures mounted on turntable, which is rotated at a speed corresponding to the rate of emergence of containers from tunnel.
It is an object of the present invention to provide a method of treating and/or processing containers, which is cheap and easy to implement, while at the same time being relatively fast.
According to the present invention, there is provided a method of on-line treating and/or processing containers, as recited in Claim 1.
An important aspect of the method defined above is that the container is loaded radially into a respective processing cell positioned radially, i.e. substantially horizontally. The radial position of the processing cell, in fact, not only makes for an extremely compact conveying drum, but also enables the cell to support the respective container naturally with no need for any accessory fixtures, and enables the container, if necessary, to be manipulated extremely easily inside the respective cell, regardless of its weight, which is supported directly by the respective horizontally positioned cell.
The present invention also relates to a machine for treating and/or processing containers.
According to the present invention, there is provided a machine for on-line treating and/or processing containers, as recited in Claim 3 and in Claim 16.
In a preferred embodiment of the machine defined above, said conveying drum has at least one ring of said radial cells equally spaced about said axis of rotation of the conveying drum, and preferably a number of rings of cells superimposed along said axis.
When a number of superimposed rings of cells are employed, said transfer means preferably extend along the axis of rotation of said conveying drum to simultaneously load and, respectively, simultaneously unload a number of said containers into and from respective said cells, each located along a respective said ring.